Self-Defense laws do exist and they exist so that you may protect yourself... But the key is: Reasonable force, i.e. just enough to stop harm to you.
For example, if someone is in your house and points a gun at you, you can shoot him, I have no argument there... However, if someone is in your house, without a gun and begins to leave once presented with your weapon, you may NOT shoot him.. now maybe you would get away with it, and maybe you should, but the fact is the law permits enough force to stop the attack. If a defense attorney can show that you went beyond reasonable force, i.e., you shot the intruder in the back, he was unarmed, etc. there are plenty of examples that show that you CAN be convicted and punished. I am not going to argue whether or not this is right, I am only stating that that is the law...
In the case of an active attack on your network, if you can stop the harm to you by blocking at your border routers or upstream, then that is all you have the legal right to do... an equivalent in the self-defense case is this:
Someone breaks into your house and you notify them that you have a weapon or you point your gun at them... if the intruder starts to make an escape, you CANNOT chase them down and shoot them!!! And that is what the Strikebacks are all about... chasing down a potential intruder and "shooting" them and you CANNOT do that.
Yes, we need more experienced and responsive law enforcement... I will not argue with that. So then let's make it so... Many arguments here are based on the premise that for lack of something better, this is a good idea... If you are setting up a network and you have the complete freedom to do it how you want it... do you do it the easy way which may not be the best way or do you do it right? You would do it right... so let's do this right!

shawn

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